Too much About human sacrifice.

[micc]

well said...... lets move on, and leave the crypto-cosmics to invent for
themselves a reality which floats their boat.



ECOLING at aol.com wrote:
>
> I have absolutely no question that human sacrifice was
> practiced by Aztecs and by others, including for that matter
> Europeans, and that it was part of religious cosmology
> as well as part of real power politics, just as it is for us
> (compare the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, central to Christian
> religion, especially visual in Catholic churches).
>
> The problem with this thread is that it represents an
> ever-recurring distortion of the nature of any society
> to focus only on what is controversial or sensational,
> and since there are living descendants of the Aztecs,
> I believe it is a violation of their human rights as well.
> Painting them thus.  Inevitably it does so.
>
> This is just one case of the general problem of the news
> and entertainment media, their biases and distortions.
> We have it massively in our own culture, and it simply
> becomes several steps more evil when it is projected onto
> the culture of "others", because then there are fewer constraints.
>
> I believe very strongly that mis-defining "news" as
> "sensational entertainment" is a strong CAUSAL FACTOR
> in undermining civil society, by exposing people to much
> gratuitous violence whether physical or mental,
> which does affect how they behave towards everyone else
> around them (including towards me, and it also affects me
> if I am not careful to avoid it).  That does not mean we have
> to pretend it does not exist.  It does mean we have to be
> very conscious about when and how we present it
> (as distinct from discussing facts about it).
>
> So what to do instead?
>
> Look at the famous National Museum of Anthropology
> in Mexico City.  I used to think this is a magnificent museum,
> and the setting is really grand.  However, after extensive eduction
> on Mesoamerica, I now see that the most important things are MISSING.
>
> It now appears to me as a collection of war trophies,
> many ugly to any non-Aztec, treated as isolated objects without
> much explanation.  This presentation will inevitably do great damage
> to the rights of the descendants of the Aztecs and of others.
>
> The great migration of Aztec history is present,
> true, in an illustration, but not emphasized or explained,
> or made the centerpiece of some halls, with parallels from the
> pictures in other books, to show how we can attempt to cross-match
> and establish a history.  I did not see the histories of Culhuacan,
> or the other chronicles prominently displayed and connected one to
> another.
>
> The great astronomy of the Maya and of many others is not explained
> in any real detail, where it should be CENTRAL,
> so the viewer should come away in AWE of the cultural achievements
> of the peoples of Mesoamerica, should feel that it is WE who are
> somehow lacking in education since most of us do not know even
> a tiny fraction of the knowledge recorded in those documents.
>
> One could easily come away completely ignorant that the Aztecs
> had great botanic gardens and zoos, before the Europeans had them.
>
> The great histories of the Mixtec are not presented and explained
> with anything like the detail or flash that they deserve.
>
> And so on and so on.
>
> Aren't these other things ENORMOUSLY more important
> than this hyping of human sacrifice?
>
> Isn't it really also more interesting,
> UNLESS the unconscious purpose is to focus on what
> makes us today think we are superior to those folks then?
>
> We are probably NOT more intelligent,
> even if we have more knowledge about some things than they had
> (and less knowledge about others).
> We are still the same species.
> We are just lucky that our ancestors built a foundation for
> us from which we can start, which we do not have to re-establish
> ourselves (and therefore become lax, and let it fall apart
> when we are not careful).
>
> Best wishes,
> Lloyd Anderson
> Ecological Linguistics